From my last name, a lot of folks wouldn't think half my ancestors were
EnglishClarks and Bishops and Higginbothams, some active in the emancipation
movement as much as three centuries ago.

Digging through the family archives, I find a yellowed letter to one Zebulon Clark,
penned in 1757three-quarters of a century before the abolition
of chattel slavery in Britain and the possessions. The letter responds
to an abolitionist pamphlet penned by my ancestor a short time before:

"Zebulon Clark contends the chattels have a right to the fruits of their
own labors. Perhaps he doesn't take sugar in his tea, wear cotton
clothing dyed with indigo, or make use of any of the other marvellous
products made possible by our modern commerce.

"The institution of chattel slavery, so necessary to such commerce that history shows
us no example of it succeeding under any other circumstance, has
done nothing for Mr. Clark, he would have us believe. It has not
provided him with the exotic foodstuffs that have revolutionized
our cuisine.

"The use of 'the press' to round up miscreants and idlers, thereupon requiring
them to crew his majesty's ships under humane conditions and at
reasonable pay, has not protected the sea lanes so that Mr. Clark
can enjoy all the benefits of free trade on seas swept free of pirates,
he would have us believe.

"Meantime, in an even more extravagant flight of fancy, he asserts that (once
set free) these chanting, superstitious Africans would immediately
become literate men of commerce, able to maintain the plantation
industry without European help or oversight.

"I know that if I were to try and operate a plantation in a country such
as Brazilwhere the Portuguee in their wisdom have barred this
useful institutionthe amount of land I could till and consequently
my income would be reduced to a sliver of what it is now. It was
a matter of good luck that I was born in the British colonies. Slavery
benefits me, it benefits Mr. Clark, and it benefits the Negro himself.
Or else it should benefit no one. We can dissolve it and see how
much better off we all will be.

"Sincerely, Leroy H. Pelton, Overseer, Maryland Park Plantations."

Well, actually, I'm fibbing. Not about my English ancestorsgot plenty of those.
But I didn't really find any such letter in the old family archives.

Instead, after I wrote last week that taxation violates the 13th amendment by requiring
us all to slave for the state, "buying" the state's "services"
whether we want them or nota moral outrage worse than mere thievery,
since the thief does not contend he has the right to keep robbing
us again and againI did receive a letter from one Leroy H. Pelton,
Professor, UNLV School of Social Work.

"To the Editor," Mr. Pelton begins: "Poor Vin Suprynowicz feels
'enslaved' in America. He is a 'sharecropper' to a government that
steals from the fruits of his labors, which he has earned all by
himself. . . .

"Surely he would be better off in a country, such as Somalia, that has no
government to steal from him. Since he could then keep all of his
'earnings' without having it taxed, it follows that he would be
wealthier working for a newspaper in Somalia, putting forth the
same effort that he does at the Review-Journal. . . .

"The community, through government, has done nothing for Suprynowicz. It has not
built roads and highways that allows his employer to distribute
its newspaper so that he could have a larger income than in Somalia.
It has not protected his freedom of speech. . . .

"I know that if I were to work as a university professor in a near-anarchic
country such as Somalia, my income would be reduced to a sliver
of what it is noweven after taxesoccupying the same position
and putting forth the same effort as I do at UNLV. It was a matter
of good luck that I was born in the United States. The government
benefits me, it benefits Suprynowicz, and it should benefit homeless
people. Or else it should benefit no one. We can dissolve it and
see how much better off we all will be."

The point, for the irony deprived, is that one cannot erect a moral justification
for an immoral act by listing the good things you've done with your
slave's labor or with the property you have stolen. Captured bank
robbers are not released based on the assertion they used some of
their booty to buy medicine for old people. Taking wealth from others
against their will, under the threat of brute force, is immoral.
If you doubt that's what "taxation" is, try refusing to
pay. Refuse to let the armed men in your home or office when they
arrive. Do "tax resisters" go to prison, or not? If they
try to escape, will they be shot, or not?

Here we have a letter from someone whose main sustenance comes from tax loot,
who is retained to train new little fledgling statists how to wrangle
ever more tax loot to run ever more government "programs"
entrapping an ever wider circle of unfortunates in the "new
plantation" of the welfare state, ridiculing the cries of one
of his slaves.

At least let him to be honest enough to say, "I authorize armed men to loot
for me what I need, because I don't know any other way to get these
useful things done, any more than the British could imagine any
way to man their fleet or work their plantations without clubbing
men over the head." From that premise, some useful discussions
might proceed.

Weren't many things now considered impossible without employing monopoly government
force once done in other ways?

There were no government schools as we know them before the 1850s. Yet the
generation of the founding fathersFranklin was no rich kidwere
literate beyond the dreams of most Americans today. How did
that come to passwhy did de Tocqueville find America's working
class the most literate on earth, when he toured America in 1831if
"only government" can make us literate?

Who's to say private toll roads couldn't once again be more efficiently built
and maintained than the government kind? That voluntary fraternal
associations might not offer us better medical coverage (as groups
like the Foresters did, a century ago) than shambling government
programs that protect the AMA's fee-for-service monopoly? That government
regulations (see "McCain-Feingold") may not actually restrict
our freedom of speech? That we might not all have three times the
buying powerreal, effective wealthif not for the crushing
burden of the insatiable state, cause of the collapse of every great
empire from Rome to Russia?

Mr. Pelton implies America was built on taxes, that the state is our "community."
In fact, America was founded in resistance to taxation, reached
its zenith thanks to the constitutional ban on direct taxation not
apportioned ("roads and highways" are funded with excises
on tires and gasoline, which are at least constitutional), and has
seen the individual citizen grow both poorer and less free ever
since the socialist takeover of 1913-1965.

Why else does it now take two incomes to support a family, at which point folks
still can't afford to pay cash for their own children's medicine
and education, as our ancestors did? Why were our ancestors trusted
to buy machine guns and morphine and marijuana without government
interference in 1912? Were they that much brighter and more responsible
than we are today? Is it something in the water?

Most that is great and good about America has been achieved through voluntary
work, invention, contract and commerce, all achieved not BY government,
but IN SPITE OF the regulatory and financial penalties imposed on
such productive activity by the dead hand of our haughty bureaucratic
masters.

The last time you paid $5,000 for a used a car, what did the governor or the Legislature
do to "earn" their $378 sales tax cut (before we even
talk about the "registration" tax)? What's thatthey
"regulated" the transaction? Ha! They didn't even send
Mr. Pelton by to check the oil. But his share of the "take"
flowed into his healthy six-figure remuneration, make no mistake.

What did the state or local government do to earn the thousands of dollars in
"property taxes" they seized from you last year, other
than warehouse other people's children in their mandatory homogeneity
camps while whining that they can't possibly be expected to help
bring them all to a state of complex literacy (in one language,
not three or four like the Europeans) in a mere 12 years unless
we start giving them a lot more than the current $10,000 per child
per year?

Why are "social workers" now paid with my tax dollars to ridicule
my cherished dream of an eventual return to freedom, sneering with
sarcasm as they attempt to justify the "peculiar institution"
that funds their socially destructive laborsan immoral funding
method which will appear just as barbaric to our descendants, 250
years from now, as chattel slavery and "the press" sound
to us today?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the daily
Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of
The Black Arrow.